Braving near-zero temperatures, a Russian Soyuz spacecraft carrying a crew of three vaulted into orbit Sunday and docked with the International Space Station six hours later. (UPDATED) Read More...

Trapped in rough, forbidding terrain with its solar panels draped in shadow, the Philae comet lander raced the clock Friday to carry out high-priority science operations, including an attempt to drill into the surface of the nucleus, before exhausting its batteries. Read More...

When the Philae spacecraft landed on a comet Wednesday, the anchors needed to hold it down in the feeble gravity failed to fire and the lander bounced back into space, soaring more than a half mile before hitting the ground more than a half mile away. Read More...

The European Space Agency's Rosetta probe released a small lander early Wednesday that descended to touchdown on the surface of Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, but it was not immediately clear whether the spacecraft was stable in the feeble gravity. Read More...

The European Space Agency's Rosetta probe, flying in close formation with a slowly tumbling comet, was on track to release a small lander Wednesday that will attempt an unprecedented touchdown on the boulder-strewn, debris-spewing nucleus. Read More...

A veteran cosmonaut, a German volcanologist and a Navy test pilot-turned-astronaut whose mastery of social media earned him -- and NASA -- a global following, undocked from the International Space Station and returned to Earth Sunday after 165 days aloft.
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Comet Siding Spring's close flyby of Mars last month dumped several tons of primordial dust into the thin martian atmosphere, likely creating a brief but spectacular meteor shower with thousands of shooting stars had any astronauts been there to see it. Read More...

Orbital Sciences is accelerating development of a replacement engine for its Antares rocket in the wake of a spectacular Oct. 28 launch disaster that apparently was triggered by the failure of a Russian-built first-stage engine.
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Just 13 seconds after Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo began a rocket-powered test flight last Friday -- and just five seconds after its innovative aero-braking system was inadvertently deployed at supersonic speeds -- the spaceplane apparently broke up. Read More...

Space station astronaut Reid Wiseman, preparing to return to Earth this weekend after 165 days in orbit, said Monday commercial spaceflight represents the "next breakthrough" in aerospace technology.
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Investigators looking into the fatal crash of Virgin Galactic's SpaceShipTwo rocket plane said Sunday twin tail booms that rotate away from the fuselage to increase drag during atmospheric re-entry deployed earlier than expected during a fatal test flight Friday. Read More...

Richard Branson, the charismatic leader of Virgin Galactic and a driving force in the push to commercialize space travel, vowed Saturday to find out what caused the fatal crash of his company's SpaceShipTwo rocket plane Friday. Read More...